Teachers Asked to 'Unfriend' Students on Facebook

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A school district in Florida is advising teachers not to "friend"
students on social networking sites, claiming that
teacher-student communication through this medium is
"inappropriate."

Earlier this week, Lee County school officials issued a list of
guidelines to all district employees suggesting they don’t
correspond with students through sites such as
Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. The guidelines for the
2010-2011 academic year also warned employees to be careful when
using communication to prevent legal or workplace issues that
could surface.

"It is inappropriate for employees to communicate, regardless of
the reason, with current students enrolled in the district on any
public social networking website," the guidelines said. "This
includes becoming 'friends' or allowing students access to
personal web pages for communication reasons."

This is the first school district in the state of Florida,
possibly even the country, to issue teacher-protocol guidelines
for social media.

"The guidelines weren’t issued from a punitive standpoint, but a
proactive one. We don’t want teachers and students to do
something they might regret," said Joseph Donzelli, director of
communications and printing services at Lee County Public
Schools.

"We’ve heard stories from
across the country about people posting things on Facebook
that have come back to haunt them. We aren’t the Internet police
or Big Brother, we just want our teachers and students to make
good decisions – and these guidelines will help them do so,"
Donzelli told TechNewsDaily.

The guidelines are not mandatory by the Lee County School
District, but rather suggestions for teachers to follow.

"Everyone knows that there are teachers nationwide that may have
inappropriately communicated with students through
email, text message or Facebook -- and even some cases, those
teacher-student relationships have been taken to an even further
level of inappropriate behavior," Donzelli said. "We are advising
teachers to make good decisions online so they don’t get
themselves into trouble later."

The idea surfaced when Donzelli and some colleagues started to
discuss how school districts weren’t
taking preventive measures to safety, awareness and
protection between the school and social media communities.

"We are among the first school districts to step in and create
guidelines on this topic, and we believe that other schools out
there will start to craft similar guidelines for their districts
in the future," Donzelli said. "Some of these guidelines seem
like common sense, but often, common sense isn’t always so
common. It’s easy for people to overlook things on Facebook that
can get them in trouble."

In January, for example, a teacher from Pennsylvania was
suspended after another school district employee posted photos of
her on Facebook from a bachelorette party. Although the images
were online for less than a day, pictures of her with a male
stripper were seen by many of her students.

The case caught the attention of The American Civil Liberties
Union, who settled the suit earlier this week. The teacher was
cleared and will be paid back wages for the time she was
suspended.

"Educators just need to unfriend students immediately to
prevent incidents like this from occurring," Donzelli warned.
"There’s no reason why an employee should be friends with a
current student, especially when there are other ways to
communicate with them through school-based websites or email."

As social networks continue to grow, many teachers are utilizing
these sites to get news out to students and organize activities.
Although the Lee County school district recognizes
this growing trend, it’s asking teachers to refrain or notify
supervisors when they use social media sites for
education-related reasons.

"There are other ways to reach out to students that doesn’t
involve social networking," Donzelli said. "Teachers should work
with their school’s Webmaster to set up Web pages where people
can interact and discuss projects and events."

The community response has so far been positive, according to
Donzelli, and the new guidelines are reminding people that
"everything applicable to your personal life doesn’t translate to
your professional life."

"However, if teachers are going to continue interacting with
their students through these sites, they just need to very
careful," Donzelli said.